Pages

01 July 2012

The Outskirts of Karma by Alfred Encarnacion

The Outskirts of Karma

by Alfred
Encarnacion

Illustrations
by Hong Xia

Aquinas &
Krone Publishing, LLC, 2012

Paperback, 58
pp.

ISBN:
978-0-9849505-0-8

Review
by PQ Contributing Editor Ann E. Michael

The
word “mature,” when used to describe an artist’s work or a writer’s voice,
tends toward positive connotations. Critics incline toward praise when a writer’s
youthful exuberance and riskiness matures into noteworthy ground-breaking
territory, or when a poet’s early promise, if a bit callow, ripens into
spirituality, wisdom, or keen and unsparing observation. I mention this aspect
of the artist’s growth because I first encountered Alfred Encarnacion’s poetry
when both of us were young. Full disclosure: the micro-press I co-published
with the late David Dunn issued Mr. Encarnacion’s early chapbook collection, At Winter’s End. We lost touch for about
30 years. I didn’t even know he was still writing poetry. And now, through the
digital network and the circuitous mysteries of friend networking, Alfred
Encarnacion’s book The Outskirts of Karma
has re-introduced me to his work; more accurately, the book has introduced me
to the mature poetry of this talented writer.

In
keeping with the collection’s title, Encarnacion employs images of the natural
world throughout and keeps the tone of this collection fairly steadily in the “now”
of Asian-influenced philosophy. Allusions to Eastern poets, art, and approach
appear effortlessly and crop up appropriately. The reader doesn’t get the sense
that Encarnacion is pasting Eastern ideas together just because he likes Li Po
or thinks karma is a cool idea. What these poems do, instead, is to incorporate
aspects of ancient wisdom-teaching and demonstrate their relevance to modern
life, to the USA or wherever one happens to be: in a cornfield in August or
waiting for “Buddha’s call on my cellular phone.” In the opening poem,
Encarnacion’s speaker says, “I read the I
Ching to be enlightened/but nothing changes; I read it//for pure
entertainment & suddenly/it’s prophetic as the TV Guide.” Things do change;
in “Winter Light,” another awaited phone call comes: “a nurse’s voice breaks
the news” that the speaker’s mother has died, while outside “footprints, clear
and stark,//fill again with snow.” The call in each case is partly spiritual,
partly place- and time-specific. We can read the call as metaphor or fact, and
Encarnacion leaves those options, and opportunities, to the reader.

Many
writers reflect on mortality and the brief span of individual human lives, and
Encarnacion does not avoid these much-examined tropes and questions about
death. In fact, he explores the subject in ways that are sometimes
confrontational (“In the Hall of the King of the Terrible Lizards” and “Winter
Light” for example) and sometimes much subtler (“Gravity,” Disappearing,” and “After
the Summer”). From “In the Hall of the King of the Terrible Lizards”:

What chills the blood

is not the reconstructed

remnants of a reptile

eons dead but a word

buried in the head,

its connotations

glimmer like swirling

grains of dust. Extinction.

And
yet, describing an 18th-c. still-life by Alexandre-Francois
Desportes which features a dead hare and bloodied pheasants waiting to be
plucked, Encarnacion observes “One feather/falls through centuries…” evoking
the lasting and revivifying nature of art. There is also the promise of biology
doing its cyclical thing: in “Deserted Village, Endless Mountains,” the
narrator tells us:

Whatever’s abandoned the land will reclaim.
These silent

dirt streets belong to lichen and ragweed.
Stray dogs follow

us shyly, pretending they’re wolves. Under
its breath

the wilderness whispers.

From
the aphoristic “Sorrows” to wry poems concerning Cafavy or the Famous Diving
Horse, Alfred Encarnacion demonstrates his mature poetic voice through a range
of subject material that seems personal but not over-telling and which is
thematically lyrical almost above all else. A mood of skeptical faith acquired
through the process of living a full life offers the reader the chance to
reconsider each poem upon re-reading and may be why Philip Terman, and Chris
Bursk have mentioned the word “wise” when praising Encarnacion’s work. Hong Xia’s
delicate sketches contribute to the total book experience. All but one of the
artworks are spare and offer the kind of mental space necessary for meditation
and reflection.

Of
the departed, “I feel presence/ in their hovering absence;/ a little faith in
the imagination,” writes Alfred Encarnacion. These poems aim to keep that faith
in imagination vivid and necessary, and they do.

Ann
E. Michael’s latest collection of poetry is Water-Rites,
from Brick Road Poetry Press. She works at DeSales University, where she is Writing
Coordinator. Her website is www.annemichael.com.